


Family Chorus

by St4re4ter



Series: Things That Could Have Been [3]
Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Miracle Mask, Post-Unwound Future, This is the Obligatory Claire Lives Story, Unwound Future Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 13:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18262640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St4re4ter/pseuds/St4re4ter
Summary: "All of my affections, I give them all to you, maybe by next summer we won't have changed our tunes."---Post-Unwound Future look at what things might have been.(Continued from Reunion Tour)





	Family Chorus

**Author's Note:**

> I love this game series with all my heart, but I think they gave up some really interesting characters and dynamics to explore by putting both Randall and Claire in the fridge, so I'm here to remedy that. This is a continuation from my other works, and there will probably be more in the same series after this.  
> (I double space my paragraphs because I have trouble reading them otherwise, I'm sorry if that's a problem for anyone reading this.)

 

Randall sat in the living room, trying to throw off thoughts of tomorrow even as they crept up on him. Night had settled on the Layton household with a surprising gentleness, and for once the clock tapped out its rhythm in peace; uninterrupted by the shouts of squabbling siblings or their older, much louder sister. He tapped along with the clock, his fingers keeping pace on the surface of the couch Hershel jokingly referred to as ‘well-loved.’ ‘Falling apart’ would have been a more accurate description, but neither he nor Hershel had the heart to replace it at this point. Flora had tried to mend the couch when it had first started to show signs of wear, and a few strawberry patterned remnants of her work were still hanging on for dear life, but most of the patches had long since been picked away by anxious hands in need of comfort. 

 

He had to restrain himself from pulling at the threadbare patches even now. The holes in the fabric already mirrored the hole in the pit of his stomach. Stretching them further would only leave a mess for someone else to clean up, and he wasn’t about to put that on anyone’s shoulders. He let his eyes wander over the collection of picture frames on the wall in hopes of distracting himself from the rattle of car engines and the little red walls that were already closing in on him. He hated long car rides, and he especially hated long car rides in which seven people all tried to jam themselves into Hershel’s tiny automobile, but they were going to pick up Luke at the port tomorrow and no one was willing to miss out on seeing him. 

 

He rocked back and forth in his seat, letting himself relive a few of the memories immortalized in the crooked picture frames as he waited for some of his restless energy to dissipate. The first few frames were the only ones that had been on the wall when he had first moved in, bringing nothing with him but a trunk and a whole tower of anxieties to cram inside it. They were portraits of Hershel as a child with his mother and father, soft in expression, but very much a formal affair. The rest of the pictures were mostly donations from Emmy’s collection. There were a few of a town covered in snow so light it looked like fairy dust, and another of Luke smiling on the back of a startlingly vibrant red wolf. Directly next to it was a group portrait in front of an airship. Hershel and Luke were smiling politely while Emmy stuck out her tongue behind them. Randall laughed to himself, remembering the amount of effort it had taken to get everyone to pose at the same time like that.

 

He had been almost as full of nervous energy then as he was right now, bouncing on his heels and stopping to get lost in every bit or bob of the scenery that had caught his eye. He had been so excited that he could barely focus on what it was they were actually doing that day. Everything had blurred together in a sort of bright static, and he could almost call that exact feeling back to himself as he stared at the frame. The reason for that excitement, and the fourth figure in the portrait, had been folded over and tucked away out of view by hands that were as gentle as they were strong. Randall felt his breath pick up as he looked at the hidden edge, the baleful pink light and the bitter laughter of a mask not so dissimilar to his own starting to creep into his thoughts like the lone hand in the corner of the picture frame. 

 

He shook his head and looked away. The corner had been folded for a reason, he reminded himself as he twisted the ring on his finger. He stood up and shook his head again. He didn’t need to be swinging bats at bees’ nests like this. 

 

He padded to the bottom of the steps, his socks stirring up dust as he left the night to its own devices. As he passed the kitchen, something gave him pause. Moonlight filtered in through the window and glanced off the handles of drawers where quiet tools lay sleeping. The kettle beamed at him, lit in a hard silver that was anything but inviting. He could feel those tools pulling at him, strings that anchored themselves in scars on his arms and hands, made and filled and made again. He was breathing hard. 

 

He didn’t need this right now. He needed to go upstairs to bed, and more importantly to other people. He tried to lift his feet to the steps, but they were weighed down by something he couldn’t see, shifting and waving in its own heat, and then cold and metallic, speaking words he had spent years studying, only to have them crowd out his own thoughts on bad nights. He struggled to move himself, but only managed to make it to the first step before he found himself locked in place again by some combination of his racing thoughts and paralyzing indecisiveness. 

A part of himself was angry that he had let this happen, and another part of him was angry at that part for being angry in the first place. 

 

He twisted the ring on his finger again, a habit that had replaced his tendency to pick and pull at the edges of his nails whenever he felt an anxious high blooming in his chest. He had grown from red edges and strings that bound him to water and blades, but that progress had all been swept aside carelessly by the wings of an aircraft on a world tour. Sand gave way to to a haunting light, and the top of the steps might as well have been on the other side of the world. He was alone in the bottom of a hole at the top of the sky, and the stairs were stretching, leaving him behind. Alone.

He gripped the railing and shook his head. No. He wasn’t in a hole. He wasn’t falling from the sky. Hershel, Flora, Kat, Alfendi, and even Emmy were home for the season and just up those stairs. All he had to do was make it up. He took a breath and pushed himself forward. One step. Another. A pause and then upwards again. His hands shook against the banister the whole way. 

 

His feet met the soft fibers of the hallway carpet, and he let that feeling distract him as he made his way down the hallway. Texture took precedence over thought in this case. It was a small comfort, at least. 

 

He hesitated at the door, afraid that he might wake someone. The last thing he wanted was to put this on someone else’s shoulders. He had asked enough of them already. Comfort that had been given graciously again and again. Comfort that even now, he was still afraid he could never justify. He twisted his ring. He would almost rather sleep here, outside the door, than risk making the mistake of sound. 

 

Stop. This was ridiculous. He lived here. He could open one door. 

 

It took him a moment to build up enough momentum, but he managed to turn the knob ever so slowly to reveal the scene within. 

 

His hesitation had been for nothing. A desk lamp lit the interior of the bedroom, with a single letter left in its spotlight. The drawers and shelves that Randall had worked so hard to organize had been taken apart and put back together again, but nothing was in the right place. A few books and a rock sample hadn’t even made it back to any place at all, and were instead resting contentedly in the center of the rug. Randall touched his ring, trying to dodge the instant desire to return everything to where it belonged. There were other things he needed to focus on. 

Hershel sat at the end of the bed, his head in his hands. Randall sighed. Hershel had probably been there for hours, lost in that middle distance that only he could reach. He had always been that way, but like Randall’s own anxieties, the burden of time, and the events that came with it only made things worse. Hershel didn’t look up when Randall sat down next to him. Randall punched his arm gently.

 

“Earth to Hershel,” he teased, trying to imitate the cracking of a radio with his mouth. 

 

Hershel looked up, letting his fingers drag down his face as he did. It took him a moment to gather his stray thoughts. 

 

“Hello, Randall.”

 

“It’s a bit late to be writing your pen pals, isn’t it?” Randall asked, waving vaguely to the desk. It was amazing how quickly being around Hershel let him spring from anxious to playful. 

 

Hershel glanced around the darkened room. “I suppose so, yes.” He made no mention of the fact that Randall was just as guilty of being awake as he was. 

 

“You know I’m absolutely waking you up early over this, right?”

 

Hershel made a show of grumbling about that, but Randall knew from experience he didn’t mean a word of it. “You’re as bad as Katrielle,” he muttered. 

 

Randall rested a hand on his chest, striking a pose in mock pride. “She has a certain charming gentleman to thank for that, then.”

 

“That is certainly one way of putting it.” Hershel shook his head in a bemused manner. “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you.” 

 

Randall leaned over and kissed Hershel on the cheek. “Love us,” he replied with a grin. 

 

-0-

 

When a blue light held the hours between midnight and morning in its strange liminal hands, a figure slipped from the bedroom down the hall where two children squabbled and laughed with each other even in the silence of their dreams. She made the long trip down the hallway alone, taking care not to break the gentle hush as she opened another door and closed it behind her. 

 

She left her cane against the wall and smiled a bit at the state of the bedroom. Among scattered books and odds and ends that she couldn’t quite name or place, two figures slept as peacefully as the children she had just left. She crossed the room, taking care not to stumble over the stacks of books and the lonely rock that had failed to make it home for the evening, and sat on the edge of the bed opposite the door. 

 

She didn't like sleeping near the door. For whatever foolish reason she felt that it might open and pull her away, as if this were all dream meant to be brought to an end by alarm bells and explosions. 

 

On a different night, under a different light, those alarms still rang. 

 

-0-

 

London was burning, and the fire gripped the city in its great smoky hands while the broken spires of something that had once been called a fortress pierced through the gaps in its fingers. The body of the great mechanical thing sprawled across the horizon like a dead spider, shaking the city's foundations with the web of earthquakes and aftershocks it had set off. The fortress itself was blessedly still, as dead as the thing it looked to be, but its memory hung over the city even after it had taken its last shambling step. 

 

Claire stood in the sanctuary of an alleyway, tucked away out of sight and out of danger, hidden from London’s immediate attention. The street lamps here were still lit somehow, and the flickering light threw long shadows against the wall, solemn and watchful things born from the silhouette of the man who stood across from her. 

 

She held her hands close to her as she looked at the man who she knew loved her more than anything, and tried to think of some way to make this hurt less, to close doors that shouldn't have been opened in the first place. She wanted more than anything to be able to turn those handles, to undo decisions that she hadn't wanted to make in the first place, but it was that exact sort of wishing that had cost so many people so much. It were those exact doors that had caused this all in the first place, and she knew in the end that whatever waited on the other side was going to hold someone accountable. If it meant that no one else would be hurt by whatever they had set in motion that day, she was willing to let that someone be her. 

 

“I have to go now, Hershel,” she whispered.

 

Hershel's eyes flashed between her and the street around him as he struggled to come to terms with what her words meant for him. For them. There was a weight to him that Claire had never seen before; a firm authority that prevented him from doing anything other than shaking his head wordlessly even now. Hershel had always carried a sort of heavy distance with him wherever he went, but in the years since she had seen him, it had become his close companion. 

 

It broke her heart to know that she hadn't been able to help him when he needed it most, and its shards dug deep when she realized he was going to live out the pain of losing another friend, that the awful panic would play across his features on repeat yet again. For Claire, this was a second chance, a moment to hug him gently and say all the things she should have, before the fire and the steam came back for what they had lost. Claire knew the other side of the door was calling her. She had made her peace with it, but for Hershel this must have been tantamount to having her grave opened in front of him. 

 

It really was selfish of her considering the circumstances, but before she could stop herself, she had thrown her arms around Hershel, fitting his head into the gap between her neck and shoulder. She used to tease him about that, saying that they clicked together like puzzle pieces, but the situation just seemed cruel to her now. 

 

Hershel hesitated for a moment before returning the hug. His arms were stiff and awkward, as if he had become unused to this sort of touch, but as she held him close he began to relax. Somewhere underneath the solemn shadows cast by his hat, a gentle trust stirred from its ten year silence. 

 

“I’m sorry, Hershel.” 

 

He shook his head ever so slightly, and the edge of his hat brushed against her cheek. The hat she had given him when he became a professor, minutes before stepping out of their shared apartment for what had ended up being the last time. She remembered looking to the nearly cloudless sky, full of excitement for the things to come, and then the rest was all light and heat. She tightened her grip on Hershel's shoulder. No. She wouldn't think about that yet. The next few minutes, no matter how short, still belonged to her. She owed herself at least that. 

 

“We has so many plans for the future,” she smiled, but it was bittersweet. Even her determination to see this through couldn't hold back the tide for long. “Do you remember them?”

 

Hershel looked up at her, his eyes clouded. “There isn't a day that goes by when I don't. Claire, please. I can't do this again.”

 

Claire took a breath to steady herself. There was no going back no matter how much she had missed that voice. She couldn't falter now. This was bigger than she was. She leaned in and kissed Hershel, her lips meeting his for the briefest of moments before she stepped back, letting her fingers trail across his cheek before letting go. 

 

“I'll miss you,” she whispered, not trusting herself to say anything more for fear of breaking down then and there. She took another step back. “You and our… lost future,” she added, but her voice caught and she turned, not wanting to make this any more unbearable than it already was.

 

“Claire! Wait!” Hershel shouted after her, a terrified desperation breaking through whatever hold he had on himself. “You can't go! Not again!” He gestured wildly as he spoke, but seemed rooted in place, unable to make good on his words. He must have known just as well as she did that there was no changing what needed to happen next. 

 

She heard his breath pick up when she didn’t respond. 

 

“Please,” he begged, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Claire. I can't say goodbye again.”

 

Something in his voice broke through a wall. She turned to face him, smiling through tears she could no longer keep to herself. “Promise me something,” she replied, trying to think of anything that could stop him from having to pick up his broken pieces again. “Take care of yourself. And…” her smile widened. “Take care of all our dreams, alright?”

 

Hershel let out a cry, but before Claire had a chance to console him any further, a creeping light sprung on her from nowhere and she was pulled apart in a thousand directions from a thousand points. She was twisting, burning and frozen, feeling everything at once as her reality became a tangled skein of endless broken fragments, each one full of fire and force; steam that came from the heart of the universe in demand of payment. For a moment, she was in the seat of the time machine as her hair burned and her body was battered by the force of the dying gateway. Then, silence. 

 

Silence and then the light of an alleyway, the sharpness of rubble against her back, and the shouting of a figure wearing a top hat all connected with her before she was swallowed whole by the oncoming dark. 

 

-0-

 

The following days passed in a blur of worried voices, harsh lights, and the ever-present scent of disinfectant as Claire faded in and out of consciousness. She didn’t understand where she was at the time, only that the world was cold and clinical, and she would much rather be unconscious than participate in it at all. 

 

The first time she had pulled herself together enough to open her eyes for more than a few seconds, she had been greeted with the sight of a man sitting hunched in the chair next to the window. It was clear he had not slept in quite some time, as the lines beneath his eyes looked as if they had been carved there permanently. He was staring into the middle distance, but straightened almost immediately when he noticed that she was awake. 

 

It took Claire a moment to realize that it was Hershel. God, he really did look awful, but then again she couldn’t have been any better off herself. She wanted to say something to him, to to tell him that she was here, but the lights beat into the back of her skull and she found herself without the strength to do anything besides slip back into the darkness again. 

 

He was there the second time she woke, and things went much the same. As did the third. And the fourth. And as many times after that as she could care to count. Each time she woke, he was that much closer to reaching the end of his wick, but that quiet iron she had seen in him before kept him from the rest she knew he needed just as much as she did. She found herself wishing for the second time that she could have been there before that armor had suffocated him so thoroughly, or that at least she could let him know that she was going to be okay now. Neither of her wishes came true, and she found herself fading yet again. 

 

The next time she came to, there was a man she had never seen before talking to Hershel. He stood in front of the chair, his hands on Hershel’s shoulders as he insisted very firmly on something she didn’t quite catch. He was electric, and clearly agitated; speaking in a rush and bouncing on his heels as if he couldn’t find an outlet for all his excess energy. 

 

Claire felt a pang of concern, wanting to tell the man off for badgering Hershel when he clearly wasn’t in a state to hear any complaints, but something in his tone of voice caught her attention. It was the exact sort of worried tension that she had found herself full of so many times when Hershel got caught up in himself and forgot (or purposefully neglected) to take care of his own needs. She tried to focus on what it was that they were talking about. 

 

“Listen, if you won’t go home and rest, will you at least sleep here?”

 

“Randall, please. I will be fine.”

 

Randall. Something clicked in Claire’s head when she heard that name, but she was in too many pieces herself to place it. He must have been a friend of Hershel’s then, especially if Hershel was this comfortable letting Randall being so near him. 

 

Randall pulled a hand back from Hershel’s shoulders just to wave it at him. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

 

Hershel offered him a weak laugh. “Come now, what kind of gentleman would abandon a lady in need?” 

 

Claire knew that tone all too well. Thankfully, Randall seemed to understand what Hershel was trying to brush off just as well as she did. He gave Hershel a gentle shake.

 

“This one, if I have any say in the matter.”

 

Hershel made to push Randall away with a smile, but Randall didn’t move from his position. He met Hershel’s eyes. “Hersh, I’m dead serious. You need to sleep.”

 

Hershel looked back at him, his smile fading. “As am I. You know better than anyone that I cannot just…” He touched the brim of his hat. “If something were to happen while I was absent, I—”

 

Randall took his other hand. “You’re not doing her any favors by exhausting yourself like this. I mean look at you! I could push you over right now, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not exactly a star athlete.” 

 

Hershel sighed. “You aren’t wrong, but I—”

 

Randall squeezed his hand, cutting him off again. “I know, I get it. All I’m saying is that you can’t be there for her like this.” He sat down on the chair next to Hershel’s. “Here. How about we take turns for a little bit? I’ll watch and you can sleep.”

 

Hershel hesitated for a moment, clearly torn. 

 

“I’ll wake you up if anything happens, okay?”

 

“Alright.”

 

Randall looked significantly relieved. He shifted a bit closer so that Hershel’s head could come to rest against his shoulder. He moved to run his hand through Hershel’s hair, but hesitated and set it back down, well aware of who was currently laying in the bed just across from him. He looked to Claire, and for a moment their eyes met in joint uncertainty; fear of the shapes that they filled in Hershel’s life and what it meant for both of them that the other was not nearly as dead as they were thought to be. 

 

“I… uh,” Randall began when he was sure Hershel was asleep. “Listen if you… if he…” he ran a hand through his own hair in an attempt to calm himself down. “Words, Randall,” he muttered to himself. 

 

Claire felt a soft smile creep onto her face at that. She shook her head ever so slightly. “Shhh,” she whispered. It was the first time she had been able to speak at all.  

 

Randall stopped stammering and turned his full attention to her. 

 

Claire looked to Hershel, calm and haloed by the evening sun as it peeked through the window, and then back to Randall, who was still holding him ever so gently. Her worry was already gone and forgotten, as fleeting as shadows caught in the last rays of the sunset. 

 

“Thank you,” she told him.   
  
  



End file.
